City and town life -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
“Th' last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born. Foak
said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he'd help him to pay his debts,
an' th' owd chap awmost kicked him out o' doors. Mother had just had me,
an' she was weak an' poorly an' sittin' at th' door wi' me in her arms,
an' he passed by an' saw her. He stopped an' axed her how she was doin'.
An' when he was goin' away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an' he says,
`Put it in th' savin's-bank for him, an' keep it theer till he's a big
lad an' wants it.' It's been in th' savin's-bank ever sin'. I've got
a whole pound o' ma own out at interest. There's not many lads ha' got
that.”
“He must have been a good-natured fellow,” commented Tembarom. “It was
darned bad luck him going to the Klondike.”
“It was good luck for thee,” said Tummas, with resentment.
“Was it?” was Tembarom's unbiased reply. “Well, I guess it was, one way
or the other. I'm not kicking, anyhow.”
Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about
Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes
lighted.
“I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin'. I'm going to leave
it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I've axed questions about
him reet and left ever sin' I can remember, but theer's nobody knows
much. Mother says he was fine an' handsome, an' gentry through an'
through. If he'd coom into th' property, he'd ha' coom to see me
again I'll lay a shillin', because I'm a cripple an' I canna spend his
sovereign. If he'd coom back from th' Klondike, happen he'd ha' towd me
about it.” He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger
on the rubbed spot. “He mun ha' been killed somewheer about here,” he
sighed. “Somewheer here. Eh, it's funny.”
Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the
“Willies” in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the
dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking
questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It
was because he'd made a kind of story of it. He'd enjoyed it in the way
people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give 'em a kind
of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about a
milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the
secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a
sort of story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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